Yup. And when we raise the age to 25, MRIs will find people don't start thinking like adults until 30.

It takes a few years of not being treated like a child to stop being one.

This is probably true but I expect there is some lower and upper bound. I suspect there is an age at which nearly all people's brains function the manner of an adult regardless of how childishly they are allowed to behave for however long.

This is probably true but I expect there is some lower and upper bound. I suspect there is an age at which nearly all people's brains function the manner of an adult regardless of how childishly they are allowed to behave for however long.

There are also some folk who likely never grow up.

What has made humans dominant on earth is our ability to learn. Learning does not just involve bookish things or intellectual skills, and one of the most important learning endeavors for human children is learning to be responsible and trustworthy and understanding why that is important. Without learning that, they will never be adults.

Learning changes your brain. Trying to learn lots of diverse things changes your brain in diverse ways, but if you don't learn responsibility, you will remain a child.

That last may be a very good point. We probably will just have to accept that people will get rights before they can handle them because they don't learn how to handle them until they get them.

So the real question becomes, "how long should we protect people from themselves?" In that case I'd say 18 at the most but a case could be made for 16 or 17.

This is a prickly issue for me. As a supergenius who was more responsible than most 25-year-olds at four, and only about six orders of magnitude more responsible than my parents, what do you want me to say to this?

This issue has been discussed on this forum before, and I've put forth every fair solution. They've all been shat on with the greatest gusto.

You're undoubtedly right about me having a point about brain development, since during the most formative periods of human evolution, when brain size was actually increasing, people didn't generally live to 25. There would have been little to no evolutionary advantage from brain development that occurs after 25.

You're undoubtedly right about me having a point about brain development, since during the most formative periods of human evolution, when brain size was actually increasing, people didn't generally live to 25. There would have been little to no evolutionary advantage from brain development that occurs after 25.

People that keep learning after age 25 keep changing their brains. That's not the same kind of development you're talking about, but there are definite advantages that accrue to people who keep learning.